us to invest in those things that we need to grow right now because that's also a deficit reduction agenda that's growing faster. and in order to have a balanced package that means that we've already done a lot of cuts. we've done some revenue now, and so the rest of the way moving forward we can do some additional reforms and make our health care programs work better and make them more efficient, and we can cut out programs that we don't need, but it also means that we've got to be able to close some tax loopholes and deductions that the average american cannot take advantage of, to raise the revenue, to actually do the job in a way that allows us to continue to grow. now, the reason this is relevant is because i gather and i haven't gotten this from first-hand sources, but from second hand sources in the press that our friends on the other side of the aisle, their position is we're concerned about the sequester. we recognize that just cutting the federal spending with the meat ax as opposed to scalpel is probably damaging and will damage our national security and will damage our e